Infinite Loop —

An ode to iTunes DJ, a beloved feature that died before its time

The raves at my house just aren't the same.

I didn't think twice about installing iTunes 11 the day it was released in late November. After all, application updates frequently fix software bugs that attackers can exploit, so I've made a habit of installing them quickly. Given that the upgrade had been billed as a major makeover, I was eager to experience whatever new hotness Apple tastemakers had thought of next. I never thought they'd kill the feature that, six or so years earlier, had prompted me to forsake the once revolutionary Winamp and make iTunes my music player of choice.

I'm speaking of iTunes DJ, of course. The feature just oozed with the stylish aesthetics that Apple cofounder and former CEO Steve Jobs was legendary for prior to his death in 2011. When I fired up iTunes 11 for the first time, I was shocked to discover that Apple had killed it off. In its place was "Up Next," a new feature that some iTunes aficionados argue is a step forward.

But this Ode to iTunes DJ argues just the opposite. iTunes 11's retirement of the beloved DJ, not to mention another display mode known as Cover Flow (more about that later) are tragic design decisions that have irreversibly degraded my enjoyment of the Apple player, so much so that I reverted back to a previous version of iTunes and haven't looked back since. Reading the 40-page discussion thread here, it's clear I'm not alone.

Making music social

In the early days, iTunes DJ was known as Party Shuffle, but the aim was the same. It provided a way for a group of people in the same room to add their favorite songs to a dynamically generated playlist, an innovation that made online music social in a way that no one had quite achieved before. The feature made it easy for party goers to select individual tracks from an entire music library, to either build a song list on the fly or to add them to a preselected mix. iTunes DJ allowed songs to be played next or added as the last entry in a queue, seamlessly, without a moment of dead air.

Once people got tired of manually adding songs, iTunes DJ, as the feature eventually came to be called, would automatically pick tunes. The feature could be programmed to pseudo-randomly select songs from a particular genre, decade, or playlist, and it could also be tweaked to play higher-rated songs more frequently than lower-rated or unrated titles.

Over time, Apple designers imbued iTunes DJ with new capabilities that made the music player even more dynamic. One of them allowed iPhone-carrying partygoers to have a say in what songs they heard. One setting allowed people to actually place songs into the queue, while a different setting allowed people to vote on which songs got played next. The additions democratized the music-selection process in a way that was never before possible: tunes with more upvotes got placed higher up in the list. To prevent the lone party pooper from injecting a fatal dose of Air Supply or some other musical schlock into an otherwise smoking mix, hosts could restrict the songs that were eligible to be chosen or voted on.

iTunes DJ quickly became my preferred way to listen to music. With a library of 57,000 songs from a variety of genres, it's easy to forget about the Live recording of Calexico downloaded years earlier from the Internet Archive or the Duane Allman anthology a friend gave me as a birthday present that I never got around to listening to.

At the same time, iTunes DJ gave me a way to ensure that the songs I liked enough to rate with four or five stars (about 3,500) never got lost in the mix. Thanks to the development of "smart playlists," iTunes DJ was even advanced enough to always skip certain songs in my collection. Christmas tunes and children's music left behind after a visit by a nephew could easily be filtered out by assigning a one-star rating to them, resulting in a smart playlist that excluded such songs. I would then designate the playlist (called "Just the Good Stuff") as the source iTunes DJ would choose from, rather than from the library as a whole.

The result was a radio station of sorts that I could always rely on to play the songs I loved the most while still throwing plenty of surprises into the mix. The electronic throbbing of The Crystal Method and the haunting melodies of Elliott Smith were never far away, since I gave four and five stars to the best songs by both artists. But those songs went a lot further thanks to iTunes DJ's ability to inject long-neglected songs.

Another cool feature of DJ was the ability to manually add songs to the list, using either an iPhone or an Android device. If I got a sudden hankering to hear The Beatles "She Said She Said," iTunes DJ made it easy for me (or a guest) to manually add it, either as the next song or to be played last in the queue. The feature also made it easy to dish up playlists for special occasions. For example, my friend Pronoy has an undying affinity for 1980s music. Telling iTunes DJ to pick songs from a smart list of tunes from that decade and favor more highly rated tunes has never failed us yet.

Enlarge/ iTunes 10 using both iTunes DJ and the Cover Flow view. Both features are unavailable in iTunes 11.

Dan Goodin

The five stages of grief

Tragically, Apple killed off iTunes DJ with no warning or explanation. As with so many losses, this one passed through a variety of stages of grief as I came to terms with what had happened. After scouring every menu item and reading the iTunes user forum mentioned earlier, it soon became clear that DJ hadn't just been moved, it had been killed off. I quickly passed through the denial phase and squarely into the stage of anger. Who were these nameless, faceless designers who had taken away the feature that had brought me so many hours of pleasure? What were the reasons? Would Steve Jobs have ever let something like this happen?

When I entered into the stage known as bargaining, I found plenty of ways to keep myself occupied. iTunes 11 introduced a feature called Up Next. Would it be able to fill the void left by the loss of DJ? After spending hours using the feature, I've reluctantly concluded the answer is a resounding "no."

It's not that Up Next doesn't have some nice touches—it does. The feature makes it easy to load albums, artists, or playlists into a dynamic song list that can then be modified on the fly. The "Just the Good Stuff" playlist that I mentioned earlier will load when I drag it to the Up Next icon, which appears whenever the cursor is placed inside the iTunes LCD.

From there, the songs can be organized and played sequentially or in random order. Up Next gives me an easy-to-use interface to reorder or delete songs on the fly, and it also allows me to add songs from other lists, either to the end of the queue or to be played as soon as the currently playing song ends.

But after hours of Web searches and trial and error, I've been unable to make Up Next do the things I most want it to do: 1) to allow people with iOS devices to vote on or select tunes to be added to the queue and 2) to pseudo-randomly select tunes through my library or a playlist and favor songs that have higher ratings. Not that I haven't tried. Like one disappointed iTunes user suggested, one kluge is to create multiple smart playlists: one with two, three, four, or five stars; the next with three, four, or five stars; a third with four, or five stars; and the last with just five stars. Then create one last smart playlist that incorporates the previous four lists and shuffle it to create a list that weights higher-rated songs and load it into Up Next. As others in the discussion point out, this solution falls woefully short.

"By contrast, and given a large library, what you get with iTunes DJ is a dynamic, constantly evolving menu of music," another iTunes user responded. "You might hear the same song twice in one week and not hear it again for months. The musical menu you enjoy tonight is different from any you've heard before, and different from any you'll hear in the future."

And, of course, this solution does nothing to give partygoers the ability to have a say in what gets played. While iOS and even this trusty Android-based iTunes remote app still allow people to use smartphones to control the volume and choose songs, albums, or artists to be played with iTunes 11, the absence of iTunes DJ has stripped away much of the granular control these apps once had.

In the weeks following the release of iTunes 11, I held out hope that if enough people complained about the demise of the DJ feature, Apple designers might be swayed to bring it back. I couldn't imagine why they wouldn't. If their user surveys found it was too confusing for some, couldn't Apple at least turn it off by default and require people like me to dig deep into menu settings to turn it on? Ultimately, I realized these lines of thinking were still part of the anger and bargaining stages of my loss. It was time to face facts: iTunes DJ was gone for good.

It wasn't the only highly regarded feature to be discarded, either. Much to my amazement, iTunes 11 also eliminated Cover Flow, a view that displayed songs in a playlist as if they were part of an old-fashioned jukebox, like the ones that used to be found in diners. The dazzling eye candy of Cover Flow also struck me as a quintessentially (Steve) Jobsian touch. (In fact, Apple first acquired Cover Flow via an acquisition in 2006; it was originally developed by one of our own Ars forum members.)

But beyond the aesthetics, it made it easy for me to see from across the room the artist, album, and title of a song that I didn't immediately recognize. Displaying the Up Next list in the iTunes mini-player is OK, but it looks decidedly more utilitarian, almost the way I remember Winamp being. It still baffles me why the Cover Flow view was allowed to die.

With time, I came to accept these changes and plot a course of action. I had yet to install iTunes 11 on an older MacBook Pro of mine, so I redesignated it as my laptop for playing music and online movies. After a week with iTunes 10.7, I decided that would be the version I'd to stick with for the foreseeable future. I have since used the older version on a Windows 7 machine for a few months with no problems, either. For those who already installed iTunes 11 and now regret it, Ars Senior Apple Editor Jacqui Cheng has instructions here on how to downgrade.

As a security reporter who regularly exhorts people to install software updates as soon as they're available, my decision to stick with a five-month-old application version still nags at my conscience. Every time I receive a dialog screen asking if I want to upgrade to a newer version of iTunes, I wonder if there are security vulnerabilities in my installation that have since been fixed. Fortunately, I've never heard of an iTunes security bug being exploited in the wild, so this is a risk I'm willing to live with.

There's still the very real possibility that iTunes 10 will one day become so long in the tooth that it will no longer be compatible with the operating systems or hardware I use. I'm guessing I still have a few years to prepare myself for that eventuality. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my iTunes DJ and Cover Flow just fine, thank you very much.

Promoted Comments

In the end every power-user leaves iTunes. It's just a matter of when.

And they lose, what, exactly? The days of iTunes being the only way to access the various stores are over. If they produce an application that manages and plays the media files of the ordinary user and does it well, for them, then they've got all they need. From a technical standpoint iTunes 11 was a massive step forward. It runs much faster (at least on Windows) than the previous versions had since I started having to use it in 2009.

No, you're missing the point. Many customers love iTunes (myself included). I've got it all set up the way I like it; it's been consistently serving all my music needs for a decade. The new version is worse enough and different enough that I refuse to use it (and I went to considerable lengths to downgrade when I accidentally installed it).

Respectfully, I hate this kind of argument, wherein I'm just told to accept the new thing because of some crude demographic argument or because there's some other way to barely or weakly overlap the functionality I'm missing. (It happens a lot on Windows 8 threads). It's like when people (including me) complain about Final Cut Pro X and are told "switch to Premiere." I don't want to switch to Premiere! Or Aldus Freehand users who had to "just" switch to Adobe Illustrator. They preferred Freehand! Being told that Illustrator is "the same thing" was probably insulting to them. The nuances of different software packages become as personal and important as preferring certain cars or clothes or food.

It wasn't the only highly regarded feature to be discarded, either. Much to my amazement, iTunes 11 also eliminated Cover Flow, a view that displayed songs in a playlist as if they were part of an old-fashioned jukebox, like the ones that used to be found in diners. The dazzling eye candy of Cover Flow also struck me as a quintessentially (Steve) Jobsian touch. (In fact, Apple first acquired Cover Flow via an acquisition in 2006; it was originally developed by one of our own Ars forum members.)

But beyond the aesthetics, it made it easy for me to see from across the room the artist, album, and title of a song that I didn't immediately recognize. Displaying the Up Next list in the iTunes mini-player is OK, but it looks decidedly more utilitarian, almost the way I remember Winamp being. It still baffles me why the Cover Flow view was allowed to die.

Still baffles you ? You already said it "cover flow was eye candy". Nothing more. It was a "fad" that was poised to disappear when it came out - I'm surprised it lasted this long.

And Steve Jobs coulda woulda shoulda...blah blah blah - HE IS NOT HERE ANYMORE - get over it.(I say that knowing the he saved Apple's collective ass - and Apple has significantly pushed the Tech Industry during his tenure)

I really don't want to get irritated, but, damn it, I respectfully refer you back to my comments above wherein I forcefully laid out the counterarguments to what you're saying. Once again:

1) It was not "eye candy"--many people (including myself) found it genuinely useful

2) There was no good reason to remove it; this is part of a disquieting trend in Apple's software development that also manifests in many of the omissions in the new QuickTime and Final Cut Pro interations

3) People do not like intrusive, violent arbitrary changes to software they're accustomed to; it's like forcing someone to switch cars or clothing brand loyalties (i.e. a personal as well as a professional set of questions)

Also, you're way too dismissive in your brusque comment about Jobs. Of course the company should try as hard as they can to emulate him in his absence -- "What would Steve do" is a perfectly legitimate and appropriate question for them at nearly any juncture. With the exception of Henry Ford or Walt Disney, I can't think of any other industry titan who fits this description. He was Apple, and there won't be another like him any time soon.

80 Reader Comments

While I generally think that Apple's willingness to have breaks in compatibility and what-not in the name of advancing things forward is one of their strengths vs Microsoft, I'm sometimes baffled by what they consider an improvement.

Case in point: iCal 10.4 vs iCal 10.5. In Tiger, there was a side-pane which both showed you all of the pertinent information about a calendar event and gave you immediate access to editing all of said information. Then in 10.5 they hid a lot of this information behind multiple button presses. So in the name of "elegance", presumably, they totally butchered the usefulness of the software.

I recall even seeing people discussing how to get iCal 10.4 running in Leopard back when 10.5 was new...people don't get into those sorts of discussions unless you've major-league screwed things up, IMO.

I don't see Up Next as an iTunes DJ replacement. I see it as major functionality that's been missing from iTunes for forever. It's also known as the "Now Playing" list in other media players. The whole reason why I ended up not going iPhone when it was time to buy a smartphone was because of this. I hated that the current view of iTunes when you started a song was the Now Playing. There was no way to queue up songs from different albums artists or views without making a playlist you had to manually delete later.

Along with removing useful things I am quite suspicious that some companies don't also add data-mining features or other snoopware or adware, which I don't want. Newer definitely isn't always better.

I'm not paranoid enough to make that a default assumption, but I do use file sizes and RAM usage as a gauge for how much spyware is embedded in a program. Sudden changes in file size with little change in features means either they completely switched compiler toolchains / resources or added in some off the shelf data mining modules.

Ah, the paradox of catering to power users vs the general population. I had no idea that iTunes DJ was so powerful, as it sat neglected in the corner of the dustiest parts of my iTunes collection, never clicked on and even hidden away as an unchecked box in the preferences, as it got so infrequently used. I suspect I'm not alone in doing this, the sad fact is that most likely few people used the feature, so they saw little effort in trying to accommodate the needs of the few over the usability step forward for many. Hopefully though they find a way to bring it back in iTunes 12, as it seems like a useful feature that never got appreciated.

I think that Up Next is a reasonable substitute for iTunes DJ for my uses, although I do miss the voting aspects (not that I could ever get my friends to play along with it at my parties).

However, iTunes 11 is a giant interface disaster for so many other reasons. They took a nice, simple, consistent UI that always behaved in a predictable way and replaced it with something that seems to operate at its own whim, with no idea as to whether pressing 'space' (or the Apple keyboard's play/pause key) will pause the current track, start playing something else entirely, or wipe out the current 'up next' thing, with behavior that seems to depend on what sort of media you're listening to now, what you were listening to before (playlists, podcasts, random shuffle, etc.), the phase of the moon, and who knows what else.

I've found iTunes 11 to be nothing but frustrating, and I've given it way more of a fair shake than I should have. I'm going to downgrade to iTunes 10 and be ever-vigilant about preventing it from being "upgraded" ever again.

While I generally think that Apple's willingness to have breaks in compatibility and what-not in the name of advancing things forward is one of their strengths vs Microsoft, I'm sometimes baffled by what they consider an improvement.

Case in point: iCal 10.4 vs iCal 10.5. In Tiger, there was a side-pane which both showed you all of the pertinent information about a calendar event and gave you immediate access to editing all of said information. Then in 10.5 they hid a lot of this information behind multiple button presses. So in the name of "elegance", presumably, they totally butchered the usefulness of the software.

I recall even seeing people discussing how to get iCal 10.4 running in Leopard back when 10.5 was new...people don't get into those sorts of discussions unless you've major-league screwed things up, IMO.

I eventually got used to the iCal changes for 10.5. I'm still struggling with the complete overhaul they made for 10.7, which seems to be intended to do nothing but make it painful to use anything other than iCloud for your calendar storage. Sorry, people who sync to Exchange or private Caldav servers!

I can understand the anger over the loss of DJ. I never used it but I can see it's usefulness. Cover Flow OTOH doesn't make sense. On a touch device it kind of makes sense because you can swipe quickly through the covers. The integration in iTunes though? Terrible. Single clicks to move one cover at a time? Terrible. I used it once and then never bothered again.

Its funny to come across this article today as I just finished the process of downgrading iTunes 11 to 10.7 on OSX 10.6.8. Everything is back to normal and im really happy to be in my comfort zone again.

There are a lot of confusing threads on the internet describing how to do it but none had the complete tutorial so I put one together from start to finish with as little steps as possible. It works like a charm, here's the link: http://oceandigital.ca/wp/archives/555

I can understand the anger over the loss of DJ. I never used it but I can see it's usefulness. Cover Flow OTOH doesn't make sense. On a touch device it kind of makes sense because you can swipe quickly through the covers. The integration in iTunes though? Terrible. Single clicks to move one cover at a time? Terrible. I used it once and then never bothered again.

Cover Flow wasn't very useful for navigating through your music, but as a bit of eye candy it was nice. I myself would use it while it played a smart playlist, so I could glance at the screen and know what was playing.

I groused a bit about its loss in iTunes 11 but soon settled into my new layout of mini-player with a few Up Next frames expanded, plus the pop-out cover art window.

On the other hand, I have no idea why Cover Flow still exists in the Finder. That's the real insult isn't it?

Honestly, I use Up Next way more than I ever used the DJ setup and I'm loving it, but I DO hope they bring some of that DJ functionality back. The up-voting was VERY cool. It really could just be another app, couldn't it? For those that want it? it could then go crazy with visualizers and other fitting features that wouldn't bloat up iTunes.

Cannot say anything about iTunes dj since I never used it. But Cover flow is the most useless way of displaying lists ever invented. Its totally Form over function and anything from a list to a thumbnail page is a million times better. Sure it looks cool when Steve was demoing a new device but that's it. I hope they remove it from macos finder and the ipod app as well. Countless times I have turned the ipod just to heave a sigh of disgust about cover flow showing up.

So anyone who downgrades to get back cover flow has a serious problem of judgment. There are areas that are up to personal taste. C overflow is not one of them. It is wrong and needs to be eradicated from the software world.

I used to use an old web tool called Tunez to perform at least some of this functionality; depending on how you listen to music I can see the iTunes DJ implementation being very useful. Why Apple would simply remove it wholesale is beyond me, but if you're worried about vulnerabilities you can at least mitigate your risk using an old version by dedicating it to nothing-but iTunes use. Assuming your router firewalls you and you scan any music you download before loading it in, it should leave a pretty minuscule attack surface.

I love iTunes DJ, I couldn't believe it when I upgraded to iTunes 11 and it was gone. If anything, it was one of the few features that kept me using iTunes.

It was one of those features that nobody knew about. I would always show it to my music snob friends who had iPhones (since, to my knowledge the social features could only be accessed via iTunes or the remote app). My music library is over 50GB so it would keep them busy all night. A lot of them said they had given up on iTunes, until I had shown them that. After that, I would go to their house for a get-together and they'd be showing it to their friends.

'Up Next' has a modicum of the same functionality. I think other people, can still add songs to the queue via iPhone remote, but it doesn't have voting, or any of the other cool features that made iTunes DJ something fun to use with your friends.

Cover Flow OTOH doesn't make sense. On a touch device it kind of makes sense because you can swipe quickly through the covers. The integration in iTunes though? Terrible. Single clicks to move one cover at a time? Terrible. I used it once and then never bothered again.

You did not use the entire user interface.

If you hold down the left arrow or right arrow key, you can flip through album covers continuously and smoothly until you let go of the key.

(Side note: I downloaded CoverFlow before Apple bought it, because I thought it was a cool effect. But I found that in the last year or so I didn't find it as practical for finding music, and now I don't miss it at all.)

I was even more horrified when I discovered (after a panicked half-hour reading discussion threads filled with similarly horrified and panicked users) that the only way back was by means of a full Time Machine restore of my entire root drive.

Nine hours later I was back where I started, and relieved. (I use Time Machine all the time, and it always works, but, nevertheless, watching it erase your boot drive is a little bit heart-stopping. I trusted it to restore everything back an hour, but, you know, I'll believe it when I see it. Luckily it worked perfectly.)

This is part of a disquieting trend that includes QuickTime Player X (I still use QuickTime Player 7 all the time because, amongst other things, it can go fullscreen without turning my other monitor into that damn gray linen) and Final Cut Pro X.

The idea that I won't be able to trust Apple blindly like I used to is scary. And the idea that I'll eventually have to jump to awful iTunes 11 just to sync my devices or whatever is similarly frightening. Come on, Apple! Get it together! (Jonny, get on it!)

ON EDIT: I love Cover Flow! I use it all the time. It's not just decorative; it's useful, damn it. I can pick through an artist playlist and whap the pointer against the cover of the album I want to hear. And it creates a nice simulacrum of my old vinyl library, which I appreciate.

And, damn it, I don't need to go running to the damn iTunes store or Facebook every five seconds. Maybe that puts me in the minority, but I don't care!

LATER Okay, why am I getting downgraded? It doesn't bother me in the slightest; I'm just curious what I'm saying that's egregious. If someone could take a moment to let me know, it'd assuage my curiosity.

LATER Okay, why am I getting downgraded? It doesn't bother me in the slightest; I'm just curious what I'm saying that's egregious. If someone could take a moment to let me know, it'd assuage my curiosity.

I think you're getting the down-thumbs because you said the only way to go back to pre-11 is by using Time Machine, but I could be wrong.

I understand that's this is sort of a common refrain, but this is the kind of thinking that ultimately kills companies. It's the "power users" that are most often integral to making products popular - they get excited about a product or feature, and they make recommendations to their friends and family and co-workers (obviously the product has to be appealing to the general public as well). The general public may never use all the functionality of the power user, but it doesn't matter at that point, as long as the company keeps the power users happy. However, if the company alienates the power user, the power users eventually turn to something else, and they will eventually also take their friends and family and co-workers with them.

iTunes 11 is quite frustrating IMO (coincidently, I was googling OS X iTunes alternatives this weekend), and while it's obviously not going to wreck Apple by itself, I have to agree with a lot of folks that Apple is headed in a dangerous direction if it "dumbs down" too much of their product line.

LATER Okay, why am I getting downgraded? It doesn't bother me in the slightest; I'm just curious what I'm saying that's egregious. If someone could take a moment to let me know, it'd assuage my curiosity.

I think you're getting the down-thumbs because you said the only way to go back to pre-11 is by using Time Machine, but I could be wrong.

I understand that's this is sort of a common refrain, but this is the kind of thinking that ultimately kills companies. It's the "power users" that are most often integral to making products popular - they get excited about a product or feature, and they make recommendations to their friends and family and co-workers (obviously the product has to be appealing to the general public as well). The general public may never use all the functionality of the power user, but it doesn't matter at that point, as long as the company keeps the power users happy. However, if the company alienates the power user, the power users eventually turn to something else, and they will eventually also take their friends and family and co-workers with them.

iTunes 11 is quite frustrating IMO (coincidently, I was googling OS X iTunes alternatives this weekend), and while it's obviously not going to wreck Apple by itself, I have to agree with a lot of folks that Apple is headed in a dangerous direction if it "dumbs down" too much of their product line.

That's absolutely not what it is. The entire Apple design ethos (and I mean "design" in the deep systemic and structural sense, not in any decorative or cosmetic sense) (and part of Apple's strength is understanding that difference) is based on unifying those two concepts in a way that shows how the illusion that they're mutually exclusive is just a by-product of unimaginative or insufficiently rigorous design.

Everything Apple does, hardware and software both, is based on the idea that making sophisticated "power user" tools that can be used by anyone is not a contradiction or a pipe dream. It's just very hard to do.

ON EDIT: Sorry! Obviously I agree with you and I'm disagreeing with the post you quoted. This just isn't my night for Ars comments....

What I miss the most besides DJ is the ability to make playlists and other items appear in a new window. It's now tedious to make a new playlist when I have to go through and sort the list after having dropped the music in.

When I could have a separate window I could drop it where I wanted the song to go.

Also I could have the store open in one window while I looked at a playlist in another.

Cover Flow wasn't very useful for navigating through your music, but as a bit of eye candy it was nice. I myself would use it while it played a smart playlist, so I could glance at the screen and know what was playing.

I groused a bit about its loss in iTunes 11 but soon settled into my new layout of mini-player with a few Up Next frames expanded, plus the pop-out cover art window.

On the other hand, I have no idea why Cover Flow still exists in the Finder. That's the real insult isn't it?

It is nice eye candy, and while I don't miss its presence in iTunes, I did always enjoy using it the few times I did.

I do actually find Cover Flow in Finder to be occasionally useful though. For example, after an Aperture export, Cover Flow is a quick way of double checking the images in a folder. It's larger than file thumbnails but doesn't require opening up Preview to check each individually.

Cover Flow wasn't very useful for navigating through your music, but as a bit of eye candy it was nice. I myself would use it while it played a smart playlist, so I could glance at the screen and know what was playing.

I groused a bit about its loss in iTunes 11 but soon settled into my new layout of mini-player with a few Up Next frames expanded, plus the pop-out cover art window.

On the other hand, I have no idea why Cover Flow still exists in the Finder. That's the real insult isn't it?

It is nice eye candy, and while I don't miss its presence in iTunes, I did always enjoy using it the few times I did.

I do actually find Cover Flow in Finder to be occasionally useful though. For example, after an Aperture export, Cover Flow is a quick way of double checking the images in a folder. It's larger than file thumbnails but doesn't require opening up Preview to check each individually.

Cover Flow is great stuff all around. Some of us find it very useful; some of us just like how it looks; and, for the rest of us, it was easy to ignore. I can't fathom why they felt they had to get rid of it.

I think Up Next would fine if they just put the missing features back in; namely remote voting/selection, and added some settings to Shuffle so you can select higher rated songs more frequently.

I love iTunes DJ's higher rated songs option, as I generally rate my songs fairly accurately, but I delete anything that I flat out don't like, so 1-star is a song that I don't mind, but don't want to hear very often. But now I have all my 1-3 star songs playing just as often as 4 and 5 star songs and it's driving me crazy.

I was also very surprised by the removal of Cover Flow; I was expecting the opposite actually, as it's an interface that just screams touch-friendly, and it was a great way to just swipe through albums when you're not sure what you're in the mood for. With a few tweaks it could be the perfect touch interface, for example, make the cover art section full-screen until the user actually touches an album; give us a prominent quick-filter to narrow down results, maybe even a bar of genres and/or playlists to swipe through, so everything is available from a single interface for rapid selection (and addition to Up Next).

If enough people throw up these kinds of points in iTunes feedback or on bugreport.apple.com, then maybe they'll actually do something about it; but please keep things constructive, Up Next for example is a great feature, it just lacks some of the functions that made iTunes DJ great.

What I miss the most besides DJ is the ability to make playlists and other items appear in a new window. It's now tedious to make a new playlist when I have to go through and sort the list after having dropped the music in.

Click "new playlist" and drag the songs from Finder into the new playlist. Easy.

I don't see Up Next as an iTunes DJ replacement. I see it as major functionality that's been missing from iTunes for forever. It's also known as the "Now Playing" list in other media players. The whole reason why I ended up not going iPhone when it was time to buy a smartphone was because of this. I hated that the current view of iTunes when you started a song was the Now Playing. There was no way to queue up songs from different albums artists or views without making a playlist you had to manually delete later.

Great article and I completely agree. @Entegy You are 100% correct as well I see up next as the inclusion of a much needed feature - Now playing list but I don't see it as a replacement for the much loved iTunes DJ.